nquered, slays the
cloud-born double-bodied race, Hylaeus and Pholus, the Cretan monster,
and the huge lion in the hollow Nemean rock. Before thee the Stygian
pools [296-329]shook for fear, before thee the warder of hell, couched
on half-gnawn bones in his blood-stained cavern; to thee not any form
was terrible, not Typhoeus' self towering in arms; thou wast not bereft
of counsel when the snake of Lerna encompassed thee with thronging
heads. Hail, true seed of Jove, deified glory! graciously visit us and
these thy rites with favourable feet. Such are their songs of praise;
they crown all with the cavern of Cacus and its fire-breathing lord. All
the woodland echoes with their clamour, and the hills resound.

Thence all at once, the sacred rites accomplished, retrace their way to
the city. The age-worn King walked holding Aeneas and his son by his
side for companions on his way, and lightened the road with changing
talk. Aeneas admires and turns his eyes lightly round about, pleased
with the country; and gladly on spot after spot inquires and hears of
the memorials of earlier men. Then King Evander, founder of the fortress
of Rome:

'In these woodlands dwelt Fauns and Nymphs sprung of the soil, and a
tribe of men born of stocks and hard oak; who had neither law nor grace
of life, nor did they know to yoke bulls or lay up stores or save their
gains, but were nurtured by the forest boughs and the hard living of the
huntsman. Long ago Saturn came from heaven on high in flight before
Jove's arms, an exile from his lost realm. He gathered together the
unruly race scattered on the mountain heights, and gave them statutes,
and chose Latium to be their name, since in these borders he had found a
safe hiding-place. Beneath his reign were the ages named of gold; thus,
in peace and quietness, did he rule the nations; till gradually there
crept in a sunken and stained time, the rage of war, and the lust of
possession. Then came the Ausonian clan and the tribes of Sicania, and
many a time the land of Saturn put away her name. Then were kings,
[330-364]and fierce Thybris with his giant bulk, from whose name we of
Italy afterwards called the Tiber river, when it lost the true name of
old, Albula. Me, cast out from my country and following the utmost
limits of the sea, Fortune the omnipotent and irreversible doom settled
in this region; and my mother the Nymph Carmentis' awful warnings and
Apollo's divine counsel drove me hither.'

Sc